Once a year, family and friends gather in the Italian countryside for the annual olive harvest. To start, we lay nets below the trees to catch the fruit that would roll down the steep hills.(Jane Gadd)

We harvest the traditional way, with old-fashioned hand rakes to comb the fruit from the trees.(Jane Gadd)

Hard at work (and busy devising ways to return year after year).

We sort the olives, pulling out the twigs and leaves.
The experience of sorting olives is tactile, sociable and deeply enjoyable.(Jane Gadd/The Globe and Mail)

The fruits of our efforts.(Jane Gadd)

The olives are pressed only once, for an oil that’s peppery, golden and pure.(Jane Gadd)

The leftover pulp is trucked away to a neighbour’s farm to be used as fertilizer.(Jane Gadd)

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